Circumcision without consent. Is it wrong?

[KWED]

Circumcised vs. Uncircumcised - What is Circumcision? | Family Doctor

Circumcision (male) - Mayo Clinic.

Info on circumcision for people's reading and viewing pleasures.

Interesting that even the official US medical position is basically now one of "yeah, but no", despite it being a massive cash cow for decades.

 

[Sheldon]

Circumcision done correctly doesn't ruin sex,

Neither does amputating a thumb, so that's a rather silly observation.

And it has a lot of advantages.

I doubt it, but please do list these.

I think it's kind of silly to say that it is wrong because they can't consent, when it's legal to terminate an unborn child without his consent.

Unnecessary suffering is the difference obviously. Also there is no such thing as an "unborn child" by definition. Circumcision involves a sentient human being suffering an unnecessary medical procedure. An insentient blastocyst or foetus cannot suffer in any meaningful way, unlike the woman whose body it is a part of.

And this is just a medical procedure with little consequence.

An unnecessary medical procedure, and it can have fatal consequences.

"The study, by researcher Dan Bollinger, concluded that approximately 117 neonatal deaths due directly or indirectly to circumcision occur annually in the United States, or one out of every 77 male neonatal deaths."

<LINK>

That's pretty grim reading.

 

[Heyo]

Probably mentioned already, but if you are going to wait until the age of consent to have a circumcision, it will probably be quite painful.

It probably is quite painful at any age.
(Unless done under sedation which it is not in a ritual.)
And an adult can consent to the pain done to him - a child can not.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Circumcised men have to use lube in order to masturbate. Intact men do not.
Is the inside of the foreskin or the palm of the hand more like the inside of a vagina?
Studies have shown that women often find giving circumcised men manual and oral relief more of a hassle than intact.
Also, this male trope of being able to last longer is not borne out by women who usually prefer more time and effort on foreplay rather than more time on penetration.
I understand that men whose genitals have been mutilated as infants want to find some post hoc justification though - both for their own peace of mind and to avoid resentment against parents, but there really isn't any.

Just keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile the studies disagree with you.

 

[KWED]

Just keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile the studies disagree with you.

I don't need to. Because I'm not circumcised I don't feel I have to validate the unnecessary damage done to my genitals as a child, although I completely understand and sympathise with those who do.

And once again, you are confusing women's general preferences within certain cultures with their responses to questions about sexual gratification.
However, it is undeniably sad that cultural bias has led women in some countries to prefer men whose genitals have been mutilated to those with an intact penis. Not dissimilar to things like docking dogs or foot-binding. Thankfully that attitude is changing and the establishment's push to normalise male genital mutilation is weakening. We can only hope the barbaric practice is eventually prohibited.

 

[Revoltingest]

Late term abortions are rare....

But it's necessary for the pro-circumcision crowd
to treat abortion as happening at 9 months gestation
so they can argue the fetus is identical to a baby.

 

[Clara Tea]

Those who are circumcised are often circumcised when they are just a few days old, like me. Can an 8 day old baby consent to such a procedure? Of course not.
In the Protestant church my parents were going to when I was born, it was common practice for the Christians there to circumcise their children. So that’s what my mom did. We aren’t Jewish. It’s not required of us Christians. When I realized I was circumcised (whilst in high school) I was quite quite mad.
Circumcision has permanent effects on the male who is at the receiving end. At the very least shouldn’t they get a say in it? Imagine if a female got an equivalent to a male circumcision. That would F up their capacity to be intimate at least in some degree.
If you feel circumcision is wrong without consent, do you also feel that way for the Jewish people? Their religion demands that they do this, right? Is it wrong for a Jewish person to circumcise their baby?
I feel like Moses had some reservations about circumcision. He didn’t circumcise his kids, even at the threat of God killing him. It was his wife who cut the foreskins off their sons when God was chasing them.

Circumcision prevents the growth of dangerous bacteria, which protects men and women.

Kids are too young to know what is good for them, so adults must decide.

Female Circumcision: Rite of Passage Or Violation of Rights?

Female circumcision, according to the website above, is harmful to women.

Sometimes, tribal leaders (in Africa, for example) decide for women whether or not to get circumcised or sterilized. They should not have the right to make that decision. However, what right does the US or other nation (or UN, or group of nations) have to rule other nations? The US is not supposed to be the leader of the world. It took a lot of hubris of George W. Bush (self pronounced humble man) to decide to go to war with nations that were not proven to support terrorism. W. Bush even decided to declare war on Niger, in order to take their yellow-cake Uranium (and other resources), but his plans went awry when Wilson refused to lie, so they ratted out his CIA wife, Valery Plame.

NSSM 200 is a congressional decision to offer sterilization to women of third world countries. The idea is that there would be more pure water, and more food to eat if they limited their populations (which are currently limited only by starvation). But this had a chilling effect on trust, since the US was thought to have designs on their land and resources. Many African nations refused to cooperate with the US.

Africans, about 20 years ago, were facing starvation as their primary crop, tapioca (from the cassava plant) failed due to fungus. A fungus resistant plant was gene spliced by a Black scientist in the southern United States (hoping to help his fellow Blacks in Africa). But the Africans thought the it was yet another plot to take their resources, so they refused the new food source.

The US has such a bad reputation for attacking peaceful nations and tampering in world affairs, that few nations want to cooperate with it anymore.

 

[Clara Tea]

I wouldn't compare it to FGM, as it doesn't prohibit sexual pleasure of the man, and isn't used as a method of control, imo.

I agree.

 

[Clara Tea]

I never had any trouble along that line until I hit around 70, and that problem was in part because I'm a diabetic.

Viagra is a medication that treats that. However, do we really want aging people (males and females) to sire kids?

 

[Clara Tea]

It is easy to make claims. Supporting them is another matter. Earlier I demonstrated that his claim that "women prefer uncircumcised penises was not true with a similar source. Perhaps that is just what his significant other is telling him. We men are rather sensitive about this issue.

Maybe we could start a new religion....one that worships phallic symbols (as many religions have in the past)? Tribal accutrements include penis extensions (to show verility). So, they sometimes have long sticks in the air.

Religion overlaps many disciplines (medicine, science, etc), and there is a close correlation between religion and morality.

 

[Clara Tea]

Well all I can say is that it is a good thing that I never act the pedant

If you ever do, watch out for scalpels.

 

[Clara Tea]

Yes. It is wrong to circumcise a baby irrespective of its genitals, or the religion of its parents.
It is also wrong for doctors or parents to decide the sex or gender of an intersex baby.

I am horrified by parents (and doctors) who perform sex change operations on under-aged minors. They have not had time for their hormones to kick in, and allow their bodies to decide sexual orientation. They may regret their decisions later.

 

[Koldo]

Circumcision prevents the growth of dangerous bacteria, which protects men and women.

So does washing.

 

[Clara Tea]

Again, I oppose all non-medical surgery on
those unable to give consent, male, female,
or other.
See post #75 for complexities of the issue.

OK.

For the sake of public health, maybe there should be a military organization dedicated to capturing people and performing circumcisions (adults and kids)?

For the sake of public health, many people (including Hillary Clinton) have decided that we should not be free to discuss such things as vaccines, for fear that it might persuade others to shun them. I think that the charisma of our leaders, backed with sufficient scientific facts, should be enough to convince people to get a vaccine.

I think that free speech is important, and, in most cases, it is fine to allow people to talk.

I don't think that hate speech (Nazis) should be allowed, because it endangers a segment of the population.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Probably mentioned already, but if you are going to wait until the age of consent to have a circumcision, it will probably be quite painful.

As all surgeries are quite painful. The point of waiting, however, is that the only reason to consent to circumcision in the first place is to deal with a medical problem that requires such surgery, such as phimosis. And it's funny, but phimosis itself often relaxes into irrelevance as a child grows towards puberty, and even if it doesn't, there are other means of treating it that do not require surgery.

 

[Clara Tea]

So does washing.

Maybe we should have a branch of the military forcibly washing random people (down there), especially if they plan to fly to other areas of the country? It would be a lot like the ultrasonic cameras that they use to look at people at airports to see if they are smuggling anything--that is, a bit invasive, but for the public good. It would prevent the spread of diseases.

Maybe we can hire priests for the task of washing people....they seem to like that sort of thing.

 

[Clara Tea]

Are you sure about "huge difference"? What about aborting a child 1 day before being born. Still "huge difference"?

Where you draw the line of "huge difference"?

Just some foid for thought, not for debate
I agree to disagree on this one

I see no difference between a fetus and child. Some women believe that they have an absolute right to do anthing with their own bodies, and they consider fetuses to be a parts of their bodies. I think that laws do and should protect children (they must be fed and protected). The same laws should protect a fetus.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

That's cuz I gots no Bible learn'n.
A baby isn't a fetus. Huge difference
there. So the other poster's claim is
bogus.

If you can remove the fetus from the uterus and placenta, and it can breathe and suck and swallow formula on its own, then it could be the same as a baby. And of course, at 22 weeks, there's a 0-10% chance of survival; at 24 weeks the survival rate is 40-70%.

That is why Roe vs Wade tied state regulation of abortion to the three trimesters of pregnancy: during the first trimester (up to 14 weeks), governments could not prohibit abortions at all; during the second trimester (up to 27 weeks), governments could require reasonable health regulations; during the third trimester, abortions could be prohibited entirely so long as the laws contained exceptions for cases when they were necessary to save the life or health of the mother.

This decision still seems eminently sensible to me.

 

[nPeace]

Yes, that's also wrong.

You guys get to decide that? Based on what? Morals? Who's? Don't make laugh Penguin.
Whatever happened to evolution? Is there a set path to follow?

How about this as a general principle: let's not do things that inflict pain on little kids without a very good reason.

... and the parents' vanity or their desire to undermine the religious freedom of the adult the child will become are not good reasons.

Then let's not do any operations, extractions, injections, or cause emotional pain by giving them things they don't want to eat, or set rules they don't want to follow... etc.
Oh wait. There are good reason... which only Atheist gets to set.

 

[Revoltingest]

For the sake of public health, maybe there should be a military organization dedicated to capturing people and performing circumcisions (adults and kids)?

For the sake of public health, many people (including Hillary Clinton) have decided that we should not be free to discuss such things as vaccines, for fear that it might persuade others to shun them. I think that the charisma of our leaders, backed with sufficient scientific facts, should be enough to convince people to get a vaccine.

I think that free speech is important, and, in most cases, it is fine to allow people to talk.

I don't think that hate speech (Nazis) should be allowed, because it endangers a segment of the population.

If government gets to define "hate", & have the power
to ban "hate speech", this is not a level of authority I'm
willing to grant to the kind of people who get elected here.
Anyone remember a guy named Donald something?
And at least one state tried to make it a criminal offense
to disrespect cops. That's currently protected as political
speech, which means...you guessed it...some pretty
dangerous censorship.